Edith Frank - Diary

Diary

When Otto Frank decided to edit his daughter's diary for publication, he was sure that his wife had come in for particular criticism because of her often disagreeable relationship with Anne, and cut some of the more heated comments out of respect for his wife and other residents of the Secret Annex. Nevertheless, Anne's portrait of an unsympathetic and sarcastic mother was duplicated in the dramatizations of the book, which was countered by the memories of those who had known her as a modest, distant woman who tried to treat her adolescent children as her equals.

In 1999, the discovery of previously unknown pages excised by Otto showed that Anne had discerned that although Edith very much loved Otto, Otto—though very devoted to Edith—was not in love with her, and this understanding was leading Anne to develop a new sense of empathy for her mother's situation. By the time Edith and her daughters were in Auschwitz, Bloeme Evers-Emden, an Auschwitz survivor interviewed by Willy Lindwer in The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (page 129), observed that "they were always together, mother and daughters. It is certain that they gave each other a great deal of support. All the things a teenager might think of her mother were no longer of any significance".